This page lets you move messages out of the message archive and into a ZIP file (which can be stored elsewhere). Generally we don't recommend doing this because it makes it more complicated to search the message archive or retrieve messages from it, and disk storage is very cheap, but the option is here if you wish.

The Archive Backup Name is the name of the ZIP file you will create. VPOP3 puts the current date here. You cannot create two files with the same name. If an archive search finds a message which is stored in a ZIP file, this name will be displayed so you can give VPOP3 access to the correct ZIP file.

The Archive Backup Location is the path where the ZIP file will be stored. This must be a local folder on the VPOP3 PC.

You can tell VPOP3 which messages to backup - eg older than a certain date, or older than a certain number of days.

You can select whether to limit the ZIP file by file size (in MB) or the number of messages in the ZIP file. If you want to put the ZIP file onto a CD or DVD or other device of limited size, you should probably choose to set a maximum file size, otherwise it will be quicker if you specify a number of messages.

If you specify the final size of the ZIP file, VPOP3 cannot tell at the start how many messages it needs to put into the ZIP file because different messages will compress by different amounts, so VPOP3 will have to create the ZIP file in several passes in this case. Because adding messages to or removing messages from the ZIP file is a very slow operation when the ZIP file is big, VPOP3 will stop the operation when it is 'close enough' rather than trying to get as close as possible and taking much longer.

If you specify the number of messages, VPOP3 will simply add that many messages to the ZIP file (assuming they are available within the allowed date range) and create a ZIP file of whatever size is needed, so it only needs to make one pass to make the ZIP file.

If you check the Allow ZIP file to be bigger than target size option, then VPOP3 will estimate that messages will compress at a 2:1 ratio and add enough messages into the ZIP file to make the required size if that ratio is correct. If that means that the resulting ZIP file is over the specified size, VPOP3 will stop at that point. If the ZIP file is not big enough, then it will add more messages as appropriate. This may mean that the ZIP file will be bigger than requested. In many cases this will not be a big problem and it means that the operation will be much quicker, but if you are going to store the ZIP file on a CD or DVD disk or something similar, then you may not want to check this option as the resulting ZIP file may not fit.

The Use VPOP3 directory as working directory option tells VPOP3 to store temporary files in the local VPOP3 directory. This makes the operation quicker if the archive main store is on an external drive or network share, but you may encounter permissions problems if the main store is on a network share. We suggest trying with this option checked first, and turn it off if you encounter errors related to file permissions.

Note that some other programs may not be able to read ZIP files bigger than 4GB, and if the backup is to be stored on a FAT32 drive then the ZIP file cannot be bigger than 4GB either.

Press the Start Backup button to start the backup process. This will often take a very long time, so you can leave this page and do other things. If you come back to this page (even after logging out and back in again), it will display the current progress, or the result of the operation. If the operation fails, then the messages will be left in the main archive store, otherwise they will be deleted from the main archive store.

At the bottom of the screen is displayed a list of all the previous ZIP files you have created, which dates are stored in it, and the number of messages and size.